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Tuesday, May 24, 2016

So today I knocked the flock off the mat. I decided I should really spray down the mat with Dollar store Extra Hold hair spray. It's a fairly common cheap way of keeping the grass on a large scenic base or, in this case, mat. The down side is that 2 hours after spraying the entire thing down, my basement still smells of hairspray...

Anyway, so here are the picks taken after I banged off the flock and sprayed it down with cheap hairspray.

Close up of a denser area of Grass

Close up of a Sparser area of Grass

Then I set up a bit of a table for Napoleonics, to see how it looks. I think it turned out pretty well. here are some pics.

I'm satisfied with out it turned out.

Someone on commenting yesterday's post mentioned ironing the cloth
before hand. I wish I had thought of that before beginning, as either
are 1 or 2 places where the sheet was folded that are visible.

In the future if I make another one, I think I'll stay away from the drop cloths. they have thick seams tunning down the middle where they joined 2 pieces. these were a bit hard to hide. I figure that if I time it right I can get a piece of 5 foot wide canvas (or similar material) that has no seams and requires no ironing for maybe $10-ish more.

so that is one more project out of the way. I look forward to getting a few guys over for a game!

Sunday, May 22, 2016

Since I moved to Edmonton last fall, I haven't done much Historical gaming. Part of this is the group that is here, but part of it was also a combination of my looking to do something different. However, my favourite period is Napoleonics, and I like big games. I had the table space but I did not have a larege enough game mat to play a big Napoleonic game.

I set out to make myself a 12x5' game mat to host big napoleonics on. my biggest hurdle was getting the scenic grass i wanted. I Picked up a shaker of Scenic Express EX881 Summer Grass blend "flock and Turf" last spring while i was at Cold Wars . the stuff is a mixture of coarseness's of flock and turf but the green is a nice bright green like the original GW Static grass. it's really nice looking.

the problem with scenic Express Products is they are not distributed in Canada, nor does scenic express apparently ship here either. while searching the internet i found a website called Model Train Stuff which sells scenic express Products. I ordered 4 "Eco"bags of 48oz grass. their estimated shipping time was 2+ weeks, but it arrived in less then 10 days! The service was good, they let me know when it shipped and provided a tracking number. I'll definitely consider buying stuff from them again.

anyway, I also bought myself a new Phone, which i used to take the pics of the mat making process. but before I began I wanted to test it's usefulness at taking pictures of miniatures, so i stepped over to my display case and took a single shot of my small ECW collection, and this was the result (of one try only). I was quite satisfied.

The earl of Essex and company. all Warlord Games figures.

anyway, on to hte mat making. I decided to go with a process i have raed about of several blogs and post on The Miniatures Page. you take a peice of cloth (in this case a Canvas Dropcloth form home Depot) and coat it with a combination of Acrylic Caulk with latex, Latex paint, and some sand. then before it dries you cover it in teh flock/grass and pat it down.

I did not include the sand because i didn't use much (4 handfuls?) and it's from a 10KG bag of concrete sand i bought like 8 years ago for another project. but a bag of the sand will run you about 10-15 bucks.

I doubt you could by a 12x5 mat for that price.

Matierials

first i laid out the dropcloth on my table, and cut it down to a little over 5 feet wide. the Cloth is actually about 3 inches short of 12 feet.

Cloth laid out and cut to size

Next I grabbed my caulking Gun and squeezed all 12 caulking tubes into the bucket.

Empty caulking tubes(right) and their former contents(left)

I then added a little less tehn half a gallon of the Brown paint and started Mixing. I added 4 hand fulls of sand, one at a time, after teh caulking and paint ad been thoroughly mixed.

Mixed caulking, paint and sand.

Using a pair of Latex Gloves, i spread the mixture over the dropcloth by hand. if you put it on too thin you see the texture of the canvas. but it doesn't need to be really thick either. the dropcloth had some seams in it is i made it thicker around those to help hid them.

Mat partially grassed.

I then began sprinkling the grass on the mat by hand. I didn't want full coverage, but at the same time i don't want a lot of the caulk and sand to show through, since it won't be dry brushed or have any depth. but you still want some showing through.

the Mat fully grassed

the total time from laying out the cloth to finishing the grassing was about 2.5 hours.

I'm pretty pleased with the results so-far. The mat is still drying as i write this, so I'll post again when the mat is dry and i can get some closeups of the final result.